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3-term limit for Boulder City Council pitched for November ballot

Advocacy group Open Boulder collecting signatures on ballot petition

By Alex Burness

Staff Writer

Posted:
05/09/2016 02:58:21 PM MDT

Updated:
05/10/2016 06:16:10 AM MDT

Lisa Morzel and Matt Appelbaum each have served 16 years on the Boulder City Council, in non-consecutive terms. The advocacy group Open Boulder is petitioning to place a measure on the November ballot that would limit council members to three terms. (Jeremy Papasso / Staff Photographer)

Does the Boulder City Council need new voices?

Open Boulder is petitioning for a ballot measure that would limit City Council members to three terms. Andy Schultheiss, executive director of Open Boulder, said the proposal would allow for a "steady supply of new voices." But the current council's longest-tenured members, Lisa Morzel and Matt Appelbaum, both reject the initiative's premise on the grounds that the council consistently adds new members.

Here's a look at the range of experience on the current Boulder City Council:

Matt Appelbaum: 16 years (non-consecutive terms)

Lisa Morzel: 16 years (non-consecutive terms)

Suzanne Jones: 4 years

Andrew Shoemaker: 2 years

Sam Weaver: 2 years

Mary Young: 2 years

Aaron Brockett: 6 months

Jan Burton: 6 months

Bob Yates: 6 months

If you go

What: Launch party for Open Boulder's ballot initiative seeking to limit City Council members to three terms in their lifetimes

The citizen advocacy organization Open Boulder is petitioning to place a measure on the November ballot that would place a three-term lifetime limit on elected City Council members, who currently may run as many times as they want.

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"Our idea is to open up more seats on council so that we can have a steady supply of new voices," said Andy Schultheiss, executive director of Open Boulder.

"It's our sense from talking to our supporters and members that the community is interested in this kind of a term limit. If they're not, they're not, but we feel comfortable with this proposal."

Open Boulder was founded about a year and a half ago, with one of its stated goals being reform of the city's governance structure. Schultheiss, who served on the council from 2003 to 2007, said the term limit proposal is "the first in what we hope will be a series of initiatives" in the future, though the group's future plans don't include trying to get anything else on this year's ballot.

He hinted, however, at a possible petition at some point after the upcoming election that would push for a direct mayoral election in Boulder, where the mayor is currently appointed by a vote of council peers.

Schultheiss said Open Boulder only puts forward "what we think we will pass," and is confident the term limit proposal will be a popular one. He claimed the organization has about 3,000 supporters.

If the petition is to reach the ballot, Open Boulder will need that many people, and then some; any citizen-initiated petition needs to get signatures from 5 percent of the registered electorate in the city — a number of signatures that, as of April, stood at 4,632.

Those signatures must be verified by the city clerk's office no later than July 11.

'Solution looking for a problem'

On the current City Council, only Lisa Morzel and Matt Appelbaum — both of whom have 16 years of experience — have served past the 12-year mark Open Boulder hopes will be the new cap. On Monday, both said the proposal is needless.

"This is a solution looking for a problem," Morzel said. "I don't see that you have a real problem here of people not getting off of council."

The longest-tenured council member after Morzel and Appelbaum is Mayor Suzanne Jones, who has served since 2011, and none of the other six council members has more than two years of experience.

"It hardly seems like some serious problem that needs attention," Appelbaum said. "Most recently, we've almost had the opposite problem, where people aren't staying very long at all.

"I think it's great to have new people come on ... but it takes a long time to really understand the huge variety and complexity of issues on the council."

Morzel echoed that thought, saying that it took her about five years before she felt she had a command of the biggest issues the council regularly confronts, including budgeting, housing and regional partnerships.

Open Boulder didn't exist the last time Appelbaum ran for re-election, but it declined to endorse Morzel when she ran for her fifth term last fall.

Schultheiss said Monday that the term limit his organization seeks is not targeting any council member in particular, and "has nothing to do with" any disagreement with Morzel and Appelbaum.

"It's just good governance," Schultheiss added.

Appelbaum said he will not seek re-election in 2017, and Morzel, who is up in 2019, said she "would not make a decision on that until closer to that time."

Measure could limit to 6 years

While Open Boulder's proposal would limit City Council tenures to 12 years, if it were passed, it is possible that, for some council members, the limit would be as low as six years.

The fifth-place votegetter in every election earns a two-year term to the council, so it is theoretically possible that someone would be term-limited after coming in fifth three times.

Boulder residents already have weighed in on the question of term limits, when city voters opposed a statewide amendment in 1994 to limit local elected officials to two consecutive terms. Across all of Colorado, however, the amendment pass by 2 percentage points, after which point the city of Boulder moved to opt out of the state-mandated limit.

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